Game Day Thread: Bruins at Maple Leafs

Tonight, the Bruins travel to the land of maple syrup & stupidly expensive tickets to play the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Last Bruins game, were up against the hated Habs at Le Centre Bell. Still missing several key players – Bergeron, Chara, Carlo, McAvoy – they managed to outplay the Canadiens in their own barn, and come out with a win in regulation, widening the gap in the standings to 3 points. This puts them at 4th in the Atlantic division but tied for 5th league-wide. Missing Chara did reduce some of the snarl in front of the crease – Lehkonen & Gallagher in particular needed a bit more discouragement than they got for pulling shenanigans is Tuukka-space. More notable in the case of Gallagher was a late-game cup-check he pulled on Kevan Miller. Miller notes that he probably should have punished Gallagher more agressively than he did, but that the player apologized to him while they were in the sin-bin together.

Also worth mentioning today, is the birthday of defenseman Brando Carlrissian

Let’s do some lines.
The Bruins still have P-Bruin callups Jakub Forsbacka-Karlsson, Colby Cavé, Connor Clifton and Jeremy Lauzon on the roster (with the likes of Donato, Blidh & Zboril participating in a beatdown of the WBS Panguins with the @AHLBruins).
The last couple of games had rookie Jakub Forsbacka-Karlsson centering the Marchand-Pastrnak line and he will do so tonight.

Usual 13th forward Anders Bjork will play his 20th game of the season for the Bruins tonight, with Sean Kuraly getting the night off.

Bruins Forward Lines

Brad Marchand

#23 Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson

David Pastrnak

Danton Heinen

David Krejci

Jake DeBrusk

Anders Bjork

Joakim Nordstrom

Noel Acciari

Chris Wagner

Colby Cave, man

David Backes

Bruins Defensive pairs

John Moore

Kevan Miller

Torey Krug

#75 Connor Clifton

#79 Jeremy Lauzon

Matt Grzelcyk

Bruins Goaltending

#41 Jaroslav Halak

(#40 Tuukka Rask)

Tonight’s opponent are the Maple Leafs. They are running at a record of 16-8-0, placing them 2 points ahead of the Bruins in the standings. Their notable injury is Auston Matthews who is not gonna play tonight, as he has been suffering from a long-term shoulder injury, and of course William Nylander is still in contract-dispute holdout limbo. Who IS gonna play tonight? Well Patrick Marleau is expected to play his 733rd game in a row for a career total of a stunning 1600 games! Yeah, he hasn’t missed a game since the 2008-9 season.(h/t Daily Faceoff and SportsNet writer Chris Johnston):